On senior night at the Fieldhouse, Celina’s seniors certainly
made their presence felt on Wapakoneta.
Celina’s seniors scored all but four of the team points
for the Green and White as the Bulldogs rolled past Wapakoneta,
71-50, on Friday night in Western Buckeye League action.
“We’ve got nine seniors and they’re a special
group of players,” lauded Celina head coach Mike Kanney.
“They’ve been together since fifth grade and they’re
just winners. Everybody said that I was crazy for keeping nine
seniors, but they’re all good kids and they’ve all
worked hard and deserved this opportunity.”
The Bulldogs improve to 15-4 on the season and 5-3 in the WBL
with only their annual rivalry game remaining on the regular
season slate Friday night at McBroom Gymnasium against St. Marys
(13-5, 6-2 WBL) in the Battle of Grand Lake. Wapakoneta falls
to 6-11 on the year and 2-6 in league play.
For the third time this season Celina senior Adam Tindall hit
a career-high for points in game as the 6-5 lefty got the hot
hand early and torched the nets for a game-high 21 points on
9-of-10 shooting from the floor. Tindall also shared the team-high
for rebounds with Brian Gagle and Scott Boley (also both seniors)
as the trio each collected five rebounds.
Tindall did most of his damage in the first half where he scored
15 points, including 10 in the first quarter on mid-range jumpers
in the lane directly in the heart of Wapakoneta’s soft
zone defense.
“Adam came out and hit some open shots and that got us
going a little bit because the kids realized that and kept feeding
him the ball,” said Kanney. “We didn’t know
what kind of defense that they were going to play tonight because
we saw them play all man against Van Wert and then zone against
Bath. They played zone tonight and we beat them down the floor
and got some good looks.”
Tindall wasn’t the only Bulldog that took advantage of
the soft zone played by Wapakoneta as Tim Homan, also a senior,
topped the double figures mark with 15 points. Homan is now
31 points shy of tying Mike Reichert for second place on Celina’s
all-time scoring list. Gagle and Boley also added nine points
as the Bulldogs got nine different players into the scoring
column.
Celina hit 10 of its 16 shots in the first quarter for a blistering
63-percent.
“We came out ready to play and took advantage of what
they gave us,” said Kanney.
It only took Celina two minutes from tip-off to start showing
Wapakoneta which team was the superior squad on this night.
With the Redskins on top 5-4 with 6:56 to go in the first quarter,
Celina went on a 9-2 run to go on top 13-7 forcing a Wapakoneta
timeout just under two minutes later. The Wapakoneta timeout
only prolonged the inevitable as the Bulldogs added an 11-2
run to close the first quarter leading 24-9 after the first
eight minutes of action.
Then with 3:39 to go in the second quarter, Celina went on another
run to put the game out of reach for Wapakoneta. The Bulldogs
put together an 11-4 run to close the second quarter and held
a comfortable 42-17 advantage at halftime.
Celina’s torrid shooting was the difference in the first
half as the Green and White hit 61-percent of their shots (16-of-26)
while Wapakoneta was able to convert on just 5-of-24 on its
attempts (21 percent).
The shooting stayed poor for Wapakoneta until the fourth quarter
when the Redskins left their starters in against all of Celina’s
reserves. The Redskins ended up scoring 25 points in the final
stanza, which was the exact total they scored in the previous
three quarters combined.
Brett Schroeder led Wapakoneta with 14 points while Josh Steinke
and Austin McCormick added 12 and 10 points. Although Wapakoneta
put three players into double figures, of the 36 total points
scored by Schroeder, Steinke and McCormick, half of those points
came in the fourth quarter when the game was already decided.